Official Northeast Merger Discussion Thread

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

 

Put whatever you want in that thread, I'm just glad they're brewing far better beers now than they were in the past 1-3 years lol, no matter how many "Doubles" or "DDHs" they give them.

 

It's hit or miss. A lot of the lagers being sold for $15 a 4-pack aren't appreciably better than the stuff that Victory / Troegs / Sly Fox / Stoudts used to sell for half the price.

For some of the low abv English and German styles, fresh local options will be better so the the decline in imports doesn't hurt as much. But for a lot of the now harder to find Belgian classics, there are few domestic equivalents.

Other styles have almost totally disappeared - there used to be like a dozen widely distributed barleywines that you could pick up every winter in 6 packs. Now you've got Bigfoot and Blithering Idiot, and that's it. And nothing from newer breweries except for maybe some special barrel-aged one-offs.

 

TL;DR Version
If consolidation was truly desired for the reasons listed, then I would love to see new regions that consider the demographics of global craft breweries and beer communities… not just along state lines.

Full Version
The justification for this undertaking was as follows:

“To help with crossover discussions, breweries that span multiple regions, discovery, forums that weren't as active, and to liven things up a bit, I'm in the process of consolidating our US forums into five core regions and hope to have it wrapped up over the week or so.”

Unless I’m misinterpreting, nearly 60% of all BA posts / comments in the Regional Forums are in the newly formed Midwest (12 states) and Northeast (11 states + DC) Regions. The other 27 states in the country will have 3 different regions but only contribute 40% of the overall posts / comments. Based on the data:

- 1,130,146 comments in 2 Regional Forums (Midwest and Northeast)… 40% of the US Population.
- 767,536 comments in the other 3 Regional Forums… 60% of the US Population.

Here’s my quick take on the data using a ratio that shows the % of BA Comments in the respective Regional Forum against the % of the US Population in that region.

Comment Ratio: Comments in The Regional Forum / Total Comments in All Regional Forums
Population Ratio: Population in The Region / Total Population of the USA
Activity Ratio: Comment Ratio / Population Ratio

And the results...

New England (6 States, Pop: 16M)… BA Comments: 249K / Activity Ratio: 2.85
Great Lakes (5 States, Pop: 48M)… BA Comments: 416K / Activity Ratio: 1.53
Northwest (3 States, Pop: 13M)… BA Comments: 103K / Activity Ratio: 1.43
Midwest (7 States, Pop: 22M)… BA Comments: 171K / Activity Ratio: 1.38
Pacific (2 States, Pop: 41M)… BA Comments: 277K / Activity Ratio: 1.18
Mid Atlantic (6 States, Pop: 51M)… BA Comments: 297K / Activity Ratio: 1.03
Mountain (6 States, Pop: 16M)… BA Comments: 73K / Activity Ratio: 0.81
Southwest (4 States, Pop: 43M)… BA Comments: 133K / Activity Ratio: 0.55
South Atlantic (6 States, Pop: 59M)… BA Comments: 164K / Activity Ratio: 0.49
South (6 States, Pop: 28M)… BA Comments: 20K / Activity Ratio: 0.13

Without getting into politics, it does not surprise me that BA usage in traditional Blue states / regions is much higher than in traditional Red states / regions (especially the South). Realigning the forums will not change that. Here is what the same data will look like when the Regional Forum realignment is complete:

Midwest (12 States, Pop: 69M)… BA Comments: 586K / Activity Ratio: 1.49
Northeast (12 States, Pop: 66M)… BA Comments: 546K / Activity Ratio: 1.46
West (11 States, Pop: 70M)… BA Comments: 452K / Activity Ratio: 1.14
Southwest (4 States, Pop: 43M)… BA Comments: 133K / Activity Ratio: 0.55
Southeast (12 States, Pop: 86M)… BA Comments: 184K / Activity Ratio: 0.38

Using my fabricated population adjusted metric, the New England forum was 5.18 times more active than the Southwest forum... which still remains as one of the five Regional forums. The concerns voiced here are legitimate. I assume the sentiment will be the same in the Northwest forum when they get snapped out of existence as our two regions are impacted the most. The two smallest regions by population are now combined with the two largest regions by population. Both were highly active forums that have smaller cities as beer hotspots that are being merged into much larger forums with larger cities.

Based on the data, the New England community was far more active than any other region on the site. If they are willing to rethink the changes that are being made, I will 100% volunteer to help reassess the Regional forums to help promote a better experience. The experience may change a bit but all of the information is still readily available and easy to access if you want it.

 

Ha fair enough. I tagged you mainly so you were aware and could receive feedback, the popcorn is a bonus!

I do think I'll create this same thread with a poll as @JackHorzempa suggested on the main forum.

 

The southwest forum is hysterical. Phoenix is one of the largest metro areas in the country, they've got a strong craft scene out there and you can go literally WEEKS without seeing a single post there.

 

@dhaakon please check the math. It appears plausible but we need mid-atlantic eyes on this

 

I guess it depends on which styles you enjoy. I can now enjoy various German/Czech styles from multiple breweries. Schilling, Jack's Abby, and Notch to name a few.

I NEVER saw some of these styles, for example Dunkel and Altbier were virtually non-existent. And Czech styles were relegated to "pale and dark lager".

You're in Philly, don't you have tons of locally made to-style German beers?

Well no wonder we're the angriest regarding this change!

I made a poll on the main forum.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/do-you-like-the-new-regional-forum-updates.658041/

@JackHorzempa

 

Agreed. This guy probably would have been using the same propaganda and “math” to tell us that the Pats were going to win SBLII.

 

If you go back 10 or 15 years ago, yes. Now, not as much.

Both Victory and Sly Fox used to bottle/can Dark Lagers, but that hasn't been the case in years.

Stoudts went out of business. Sly Fox still has their flagship Pils and Helles, but doesn't can any of their other lagers other than Oktoberfest. Victory used to brew Helles, Dunkel, Maibock, Doppelbock, Weizenbock, Altbier, a bunch of Pilsner variations, etc. but all have been discontinued or relegated to brewpub-only rarities.

 

I'm a little torn here... attended Villanova and then Carnegie Mellon so I'm an Eagles and Flyers fan. My father was a Jets season ticket holder so it was a pretty easy decision to find a different rooting interest. I live 5 minutes from the New York border and must also admit to being a lifelong Yankees fan. I hope the New England community doesn't banish me... oh wait... Too soon?

 

Which Super Bowl was SBLII? Its hard to keep track of all of the Super Bowls they were in.

 

Just looked, and wow. Houston and San Antonio are both Top 10 cities as well. Maybe it's that a lot of the Sun Belt population explosion has been Boomer retirees that are less likely to be active on the internet or drink craft beer? But you'd think "hip" places like Austin would balance that out.

 

You wouldn’t consider the beers F&M and Human Robot are producing (both with some popularity) as true to style?

 

Your calculation of BA comments related to population basically just aligns with breweries per capita:

But once you get past the Bible Belt and Mormons, the correlation to state politics breaks down.

 

The question in changes like this should be, "What is the intended change in behavior or the improvement to the end user?".

If the intended change in behavior is to increase the amount of discussions I'm not sure that this is the best way to do that. If a beer is widely distributed its better to discuss that in the larger forums, not the local ones. These discussions are about local beer and issues which affect the local area (e.g. can I travel from MA to Maine during COVID, local laws, etc.). Local should be about places the majority of people can travel to for a day trip. All the states in New England are day trips for me (for the most part). Most if not all of the new states includes are not day trips. If I'm planning a trip to one of them I would have gone to the regional forum as a one (or few) time visit. The Other Half forum should be about what's currently available or going on at the brewery not what's being distributed to one of 10 states. You don't need to increase the talk within specific threads like Other Half or Tree House, they are already busy. You need to increase the conversations about small, local breweries. If I start a thread about my favorite local brewery (Amory's Tomb to be specific) it will get lost quickly in a larger regional thread. That in effect reduces the amount of conversations as well as doing what this website is meant to do, Advocate Beer! There should be more focus on local beer, not less! Again you want to increase conversations? Start getting these local brewers more active on the regional threads. So I'm against it not because I can't ignore the threads I don't care about or just focus on the ones I have set to "watch", I'm against it because I don't see how this helps local beer.

 

Also has some strong similarity to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White...hite_American_by_state_in_the_USA_in_2010.svg

 

F&M is great, but for English styles and Saisons rather than German styles, they've only released 3 lagers so far.

Since Human Robot only opened a year ago, I have yet to have any experience with them, as I have not made any beer trips to the city since COVID started. But looks like it.

But both of those places are really small and don't distribute, so I wasn't really putting them into the conversation when the question was about the availability of "tons" of locally-brewed German inspired beer on store shelves.

 

Same. It got to a point where I only had to type "b" into my browser and that immediately took me to the New England forum. Now it's an error page. Can we at least get a url redirect?